February 9, 2017 — eHealth Technologies and HealtheConnections, a Syracuse-based regional health information organization (RHIO) supporting health information exchange (HIE) for the 11 counties of central and northern New York, have teamed up to share medical images across the care provider community.

Ready access to community radiology imaging studies is vital to accurately diagnose and treat patients. The sharing of imaging studies across healthcare providers has been costly and time-consuming, requiring manual intervention for patients and providers. HealtheConnections and eHealth Technologies have enabled access to imaging studies available in eHealth’s HIE for downloading and collaborative sharing with providers’ own picture archiving and communication system (PACS). This capability, called Transfer-to-PACS, is designed to alleviate the inefficiencies associated with sharing imaging studies, and is now available to HealtheConnections’ users as one of a growing array of workflows offered through eHealth Connect Image Exchange.

By embedding image exchange within HIE services, HealtheConnections provides hospitals and imaging centers with access to all imaging studies for patients across Central New York. Radiologists and support staff are able to access the HIE and select external studies of interest with a single click, seamlessly reconciling and transferring information into their own PACS.

Greater automation and more efficient workflows are realized through fully automated request, receipt, approval and reconciliation of imaging studies that are transferred;

Patient identities across all participating locations are managed in the background by the HIE, reducing the possibility of confusion or error; and

A clear determination as to whether caregivers are authorized and patients have consented is made based on securely managed information in the HIE.

“Since implementing Transfer-to- PACS, our workflow has become more efficient than ever,” said Obie Burger of K&A Radiologic Technology Services Inc, part of HealtheConnections’ network. “There is no more time wasted while waiting around for images to be sent to our office on discs. Instead, we can pull up prior results in the HIE and compare them immediately to the new images — it must save me three hours per day. This has made such a tremendous positive impact on the quality of care we provide to our patients.”